University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Professional and Organizational Development To Improve the Academy Network in Higher Education 1988 Alternatives for Evaluating the Death Education Student J. Eugene Knott Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/podimproveacad Part of the Higher Education Administration Commons Knott, J. Eugene, "Alternatives for Evaluating the Death Education Student" (1988). To Improve the Academy. 150. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/podimproveacad/150 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in To Improve the Academy by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Alternatives for Evaluating the Death Education Student J. Eugene Knott The University of Rhode Island Although grading in postsecondary education, according to Eison and Pollio (1987), dates back about 200 years, the formal pursuit of learning focused on human mortality per se has been a part of higher education for only about thirty years. In that brief period, however, has come a rapidly growing concern with issues of evaluating and grading, paired with con­ cern about motivation for enrollment in such courses in the first place. I've been very interested for some years in self-assessment as it bears on evaluation for grading, especially in courses where the content and ap­ proach encourage a great deal of self-disclosure and evaluation is likely to be highly subjective. The main question which intrigues me centers on whether adult stu­ dents given the option of choosing weights to be given to the various grad­ ing components in a course will use their self-knowledge to optimize their grades. While allowing them to assign those weights may seem like an at­ tempt to dodge responsibility for grading, I think it is responsive to the reality of adult learners, their characteristics, and the body of research which suggests a different, more self-directed approach to much of their formal and informal education. Moreover, I agree with Guskey's asser­ tion that " ... procedures for evaluating learning should be congruent with learning objectives" (1988, pp. 62-63). From To Improve the Academy: Resources for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Development, Vol. 7. Edited by J. Kurfiss, L. Hilsen, S. Kahn, M.D. Sorcinelli, and R. Tiberius. POD/New Forums Press, 1988. 33 34 To Improve the Academy This paper is a description of one attempt to deal with the grading issue. Specifically, it describes a pilot study in a seminar on "Death, dying, and bereavement" which is offered as an upper division and graduate level three-credit course in alternating semesters. The course is designed to help students: learn the variety of impacts death has on human behavior; see death as a meaningful human experience that can be dealt with; see that death has several significant implications for the living, including determining what choices are valid for oneself and others; be able to apply principles and behaviors of known effectiveness in situations of life and death decision-making and grief for self and others. Students are graded on the basis of their performance on take home quizzes, a written brief­ ing report, and participation in class activities. The course attracts a fair number of social science and human ser­ vice students, but, in truth, the major is not a relevant factor in electing this course for most. Many of the students are older than the typical col­ lege student and the great majority are women. Most are drawn to the course out of a desire to find a structured way to come to terms with per­ sonal issues having to do with loss through death, or to resolve a particular bereavement. They are often candid about those needs, although their no­ tions of the methods by which such resolution might come about are nebulous at best when the course begins. Some openly state that they were drawn to the course by the hope of coming to grips with their own mor­ tality. Others are less candid and claim broader, less personal sounding goals in the first class meetings. Interestingly, each semester, while en­ rolled in the course, between four and eighteen percent of the students have lost a significant other to death. Method In this modest pilot study I was interested in checking out my guess that students who take this course are more concerned about learning than about grades and, more importantly, I wanted to test a notion about the consequences of allowing students to select their own grade weights. My hypothesis about the latter was that students would get better component and final grades if each decided in advance how much relative weight should be attached to their quizzes, briefing reports, and class activities participation than if I assigned uniform weights to each component for all students. The LOGO II (Eison, Pollio, and Milton, 1982) was used to examine student orientations toward learning and grading. It was administered during the first class and again at the end of the semester. The test in- Evaluating the Death Education Student 35 eludes sixteen items about students' attitudes toward various classroom policies or student learning behaviors. Students respond to them on a strongly agree to strongly disagree scale. Another sixteen items about study attitudes and behaviors call for frequency estimates. The results generate separate learning and grade orientation scores. The primary reason for conducting this study, however, was to find out if students fare better when they can influence the weightings of the elements of the grad­ ing system-that is, decide what counts for the most and least number of points in grading. Procedurally, the grade weighting options were described on a "contract" which allowed students to assign percent weights to each of the three graded aspects of the course: three take home quizzes, a briefing report, and class activities participation. The con­ straints were that the quizzes (collectively) had to count at least 20%, the report at least 25%, and the participation could not count more than 25%. I collected their contracts in the second class and set them aside without looking at them until the end of the semester. I told them about the pre­ vious semester's standard weights ( 40, 35, and 25% ), which I used for com­ parison, after they turned in their contracts. I used a Macintosh computer and an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the data and compare the weighted grades. Results and Discussion The LOGO II results were about as expected: the mean Learning Orientation Total score at the beginning of the semester was 54.91 for the 11 students in the course. Their average Grade Orientation score was 35.82. That would put them above the 80th percentile on Learning Orien­ tation, and below the 20th on Grade Orientation, on a set of norms based on a sample of 812 students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Eison, undated). Their mean scores were essentially the same at the end of the semester. There was a tendency, albeit statistically insignificant, toward learning orientation being highest in the oldest students and grade orientation highest in the youngest. The weights assigned to each grading component by students, and the component and total scores each received, are reported in Table 1, along with comparison weights and scores based on the previous semester's grading system. No student assigned weights which matched my com­ parison system. One result was that the component scores of individuals varied quite dramatically from what they would have been if I had applied a standard weighting system. Even so, no total score was more than six tenths of a point different than it would have been, and the mean total 36 To Improve the Academy TABLE 1 Grading Component Weights and Scores Raw scores (r-score) and student (S) and instructor (I) weights and weighted scores (w-score) Quizzes Participation Report Final Score Student S I S I S I SI r-score 90.0 87.0 90.0 01 weights 40% 40% 25% 35% 35% 25% w-score 36.0 36.0 21.8 30.5 31.5 22.5 89.3 89.0 r-score 92.0 87.0 93.0 02weights 30% 40% 45% 35% 25% 25% w-score 27.6 36.8 39.2 30.5 23.3 23.3 90.0 90.5 r-score 92.0 87.0 93.0 03weights 45% 40% 40% 35% 15% 25% w-score 41.4 36.8 34.8 30.5 14.0 23.3 90.2 90.5 r-score 88.0 90.0 90.0 04weights 50% 40% 25% 35% 25% 25% w-score 44.0 35.2 22.5 31.5 22.5 22.5 89.0 89.2 r-score 91.0 90.0 90.0 05weights 30% 40% 45% 35% 25%25% w-score 27.3 36.4 40.5 31.5 22.5 22.5 90.3 90.4 r-score 87.0 84.0 87.0 06weights 20% 40% 55% 35% 25% 25% w-score 17.4 34.8 46.2 29.4 21.8 21.8 85.4 86.0 r-score 88.7 90.0 93.0 07weights 45% 40% 30% 35% 25% 25% w-score 39.9 35.5 27.0 31.5 23.3 23.3 90.2 90.2 r-score 83.7 84.0 90.0 08weights 50% 40% 25% 35% 25% 25% w-score 41.8 33.5 21.0 29.4 22.5 22.5 85.3 85.4 r-score 91.0 87.0 90.0 09weights 45% 40% 30% 35% 25% 25% w-score 41.0 36.4 26.1 30.5 22.5 22.5 89.6 89.4 (Continued on next page.) Evaluating the Death Education Student 37 TABLE 1-Continued.